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tanya3286 — Yesteryear
#lost #love #memoirs #musings #nostalgia #prosetry #romance
Published: 2014-08-31 11:31:47 +0000 UTC; Views: 638; Favourites: 2; Downloads: 0
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Description
Why do we long for the things we left behind in the past? Of roses plucked and tucked away within the pages of a favourite book, only to fall into your lap years later when old stories and memories seem larger than the promise of future.
Is it wrong to turn back and wonder and linger a bit on the past? To breathe in the air of yesteryear, graze lonely fingers upon the walls that have seen and heard it all, and steal a moment from time.
Our old melodies are the sweetest… happy, yet bittersweet. When love is young, and so is the world, every small heartbreak feels like the end of the road; yet the only thing that doesn't end is regret… of words left unsaid and deeds left undone.
Comments: 3
I love this. Amazing little scrap of prose. 10/10 for style and flow, 10/10 for word choice, 9/10 for grammar/mechanics
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Glad you enjoyed it. I love tid-bits as and when they come to me.
That thing about ellipses? Is that true, like, is there such a rule for writing and thought process? I'm curious. Do tell.
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There are generally three ways to insert a pause in thought. A comma is generally "take a breath before going on," an em dash — is used to point a break out (imagine raising a finger for emphasis in conversation) or parenthetically—that is, when an explanation or rephrasing follows. Ellipses usually convey a longer pause, either trailing off or stopping to let something sink in, or to represent losing and picking up a train of thought. Ellipses and em dashes should not have spaces on either side, though you can use them "like this—" to indicate a breakoff (both ellipses and em dashes are valid here).
Semicolons are an interesting case. A lot of people use them to replace commas, but that's not generally correct. Semicolons are used to connect two independent clauses where the second continues or expounds on the thought of the first. A good rule of thumb is "don't use a semicolon any place you couldn't use a period," and "don't use a semicolon to connect different thoughts." You start the second clause with "yet," which means it's going to be saying something different from the one before, so having a semicolon there throws things off. The second clause here deliberately takes away from the first in order to expand our viewpoint. Where you should use a semicolon is when you have a second clause adding to the thought of the first and you want more flow than the break a period creates. Where you have it, I'd suggest switching to an em dash or ellipsis (probably an ellipsis, since you make use of several already).
As for thought processes (for example, adding a character's thoughts into a paragraph in a work of fiction) there's not really a set convention yet. What seems to be popular/work well is putting the thought into italics but otherwise treating it like it's in quotation marks as far as punctuation and capitalization before and after.
Just my thoughts 
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